Conventional methods of making footwear include forming a rubber outsole material (which can include a natural or synthetic rubber material), compounding the rubber outsole material into a sheet, cooling the sheet, extruding or calendaring the sheet into an outsole component, and then cutting the outsole component into forms for rubber outsoles. In many cases these rubber outsoles are still in raw rubber form and need to be chemically altered (vulcanized) to cure and strengthen the rubber material. This is typically done after assembly of the rubber outsole into a footwear article. Conventional vulcanization processes may be performed on footwear articles for at least 70-80 minutes at a temperature of about 120 degrees Celsius.
Despite improvements in footwear materials and design, the methods for making footwear articles described above, including the need to vulcanize the footwear article for at least 70-80 minutes, have not changed substantially for at least the last 60 years or so.
These and other shortcomings are addressed by aspects of the present disclosure.